a poet in tulsa

inspired by the series of poems fredrico garcia lorca composed during his visit to columbia university in 1929/1930, i am exploring the city of tulsa through my camera and my words.

finding traces: the visceral remains of old roads, battered ghosts and forgotten stories; collecting these artifacts into a whole, with the aim for publication in 2017.

one of the pieces, "before word, soñando con el vuelo", inspired by a painting created by my wife cynthia brown follows.​

before words: painting by Cynthia Brown

before word, soñando con el vuelo

the betrayal had not beguntime was not yet timestars were not starsmoon had yet to become moon

we awakened upon dayfacing the warmthplunging our skin into the liftingof the returning world pausing at the half-recalled sensationof the filtering colors of sky

it was left to the keening onesto articulate songthen leave those of us bound to earth to beseduced by their plaintive criesto began our dreamingcompelled to follow andsoar beyond into flight

this delicate floatingborne upon highbefore even the heavens becamewe were lifted with the frailty of these incoherent wingssome nocturnal trystbetween our selves and the faraway cloudsever closer we drewalmost forever butnot quite touching

how far we flewpassing over creaturesin their reveriethe crevices within our eyesfilled with invocations of lightand of darkness rendered byits absence

it was never easy to returnthe time that was not wore us until wearywe arose again from the dustetching the hollow placestracing the riverbed

with faltering claritywe recalled how we could notand of how we wantedon these altars we placed our brittle handscarved into stonemolded into claythese visions

we recorded this passageof day into nightthe hunger of our fleshthe smell of blood poolingrendering the worldof the squatting manhis transformationas he became turtle his carapacemade of bone and ashwas the quiet way of calling home to thosestill lost in the flightof translating shadows

later they were to be foundsilenced and buriedin the delugeof the coming daysthat emptied our soulsspent our fireand bound us again to this place